ll was known at Tiptoff Hall; if I looked at a farmer's
daughter, it was said I had ruined her. My faults are many, I confess,
and as a domestic character, I can't boast of any particular regularity
or temper; but Lady Lyndon and I did not quarrel more than fashionable
people do, and, at first, we always used to make it up pretty well. I
am a man full of errors, certainly, but not the devil that these odious
backbiters at Tiptoff represented me to be. For the first three years
I never struck my wife but when I was in liquor. When I flung the
carving-knife at Bullingdon I was drunk, as everybody present can
testify; but as for having any systematic scheme against the poor lad,
I can declare solemnly that, beyond merely hating him (and one's
inclinations are not in one's power), I am guilty of no evil towards
him.

I had sufficient motives, then, for enmity against the Tiptoffs, and am
not a man to let a feeling of that kind lie inactive. Though a Whig,
or, perhaps, because a Whig, the Marquess was one of the haughtiest
men breathing, and treated commoners as his idol the great Earl used to
treat them--after he came to a coronet himself--as so many low vassals,
who might be proud to lick his shoe-buckle. When the Tippleton mayor and
corporation waited upon him, he received them covered, never offered Mr.
Mayor a chair, but retired when the refreshments were brought, or had
them served to the worshipful aldermen in the steward's room. These
honest Britons never rebelled against such treatment, until instructed
to do so by my patriotism. No, the dogs liked to be bullied; and, in the
course of a long experience, I have met with but very few Englishmen who
are not of their way of thinking.

It was not until I opened their eyes that they knew their degradation.
I invited the Mayor to Hackton, and Mrs. Mayoress (a very buxom pretty
groceress she was, by the way) I made sit by my wife, and drove them
both out to the races in my curricle. Lady Lyndon fought very hard
against this condescension; but I had a way with her, as the saying is,
and though she had a temper, yet I had a better one. A temper, psha! A
wild-cat has a temper, but a keeper can get the better of it; and I know
very few women in the world whom I could not master.

Well, I made much of the mayor and corporation; sent them bucks for
their dinners, or asked them to mine; made a point of attending their
assemblies, dancing with their wives and daughters, going thr